Samsung Galaxy Tab Ban the Latest Stumble on a Road to Success

The Galaxy Tab was banned from the United States, customers are still awaiting their Galaxy S III smartphones and low-end smartphones face new competition. Does it matter?

Samsung is finding the climb to the
top of the mobile industry to be a slippery one.
In Samsungs ongoing patent disputes
with Apple, a U.S. District judge in California, Lucy Koh, sided with Apple
June 26, ruling that Samsungs Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet should not be available
for sale in the United States. Following rulings in Germany and Australia, hers
was the third court to decide this.

Although Samsung has a right to
compete, it does not have a right to compete unfairly, by flooding the market
with infringing products, Koh wrote, according to a report from Reuters. The order will become effective once
Apple posts a $2.6 million bond, meant to protect Samsung from any damages
suffered, should the injunction later be found to be incorrect.

Even with this safety net in place,
Samsungs legal team didnt rest for a moment. The lawyers filed an appeal
approximately five hours laterrecord time, wrote consultant and patent
expert Florian Mueller on his Foss Patents blog. Mueller added that the
ruling gives strength to Apples copycat allegations, which say the iPad and
Galaxy Pad 10.1 are substantially similar. In court, according to Mueller,
Koh held up both devices at a distance, and Samsungs legal counsel was unable
to tell them apart. Not great for Samsungs argument.
In competing against the Apple
iPhone, Samsung would appear to be having better luck. Sales of its Galaxy S
III smartphone are expected to exceed 10 million units by July, JK Shin, head
of Samsungs mobile division, told reporters earlier this week, adding that
second-quarter revenue is expected to exceed that of its first.
During the first quarter of 2012,
Apples smartphone sales increased 88.7 percent year-over-year. Samsungs
smartphone shipments grew 267 percent during that time, according to IDC.

Meeting such demand, however, is
proving trickier than Samsung expected, and now it isnt expected to deliver
the devices before the close of its second-quarter, June 30, shifting its
revenue to the second half of the year.
Investment firm Barclays cut its
second-quarter Samsung Galaxy S III sales forecast but raised its forecast for
the third-quarter.
After debuting in 28 countries May
29, the Galaxy S III was to launch in the United States on the Sprint and
T-Mobile networks June 21, before continuing on to Verizon Wireless, AT&T
and U.S. Cellular. When the date arrived, however, T-Mobile had only 16GB models
in stock. Sprint was made to issue a statement saying that due to worldwide
overwhelming demand, it had zilch to offer.
On June 28 Sprint finally shared
that 16GB and 32GB models, in both blue and white, will be available July 1.
AT&T has been coy about the
phones sales date all along, saying it will ship in July, but now it, too, is
citing supply constraints, and with July nearing, it still has no firm date
for shipping even preordered devices.
The Verizon Wireless site maintains that its Galaxy S
III devices will ship by July 11.
Samsung is said to also be dealing
with the matter of competitors swarming it in the low-end smartphone market,
forcing the company to consider price dips on already inexpensive phones
designed for markets such as China. However, analysts told The
Wall Street Journal, according to a June 28 report, that as long
as sales of high-end smartphones remain strong, no one is too concerned.
We are convinced that the companys
earnings cycle is still far from the peak, brokerage firm Barclays reported,
according to The Journal.
While Samsung may occasionally lose
its footing, unlike too many of its competitors, it is at least on the right
road and headed in the right direction.
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Maisto on Twitter.

Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.